Balough
December 13, 2013
The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department was out of step when it loaded the RUMBA program into all of its 6,000 computers when it had a license for only half that number, making it liable for copyright infringement. The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s finding and rejected claims by the LASD that loading […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
An invention promotion operator must pay $26 million in consumer redress and stop its deceptive marketing practices. The firm failed to disclose, among other things, that it made very little money from invention royalties and the majority of its money from fees charged to the inventors. The court found that either expressly or by implication […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
The “pandering” provisions of the federal child pornography law are unconstitutionally overly-broad and vague, the Eleventh Circuit found, reversing a conviction under the statute. The PROTECT Act, 18 U.S.C. Sec. 2252A(a)(3)(B) provides that it is a crime for any person to advertise, promote, distribute or solicit “any material or purported material in a manner that […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
A fired church music director cannot use the federal courts to sue for age discrimination, the Seventh Circuit affirmed. The court ruled that the selection of music at church is religious in nature. As a result, the First Amendment bars the music director’s suit against the church for age discrimination. The case was filed after […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
A hospital may be liable for one of its employees giving out confidential health information in a bar, an Illinois Appellate Court found. Illini Community Hospital was sued by a patient after her positive pregnancy test was revealed to her twin sister by a hospital employee having drinks in a bar. The hospital filed a […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
Google image search engine’s use of thumbnails probably infringes on the owner of the image’s copyright, a U.S. District Court judge found. The court granted a preliminary injunction prohibiting Google from displaying the thumbnail images from Perfect10.com’s website when showing results of an image search. The service in question is Google’s image search that displays […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
A law professor cannot force the Federal Bureau of Investigation under the Privacy Act to correct and to update files on him dating back to 1970 that include excerpts from his speeches that he alleges infringe on his First Amendment rights. The Seventh Circuit ruled that his files are within the FBI’s “law enforcement activity” […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
ChoicePoint, Inc.’s failure to protect consumers’ private data will cost it $15 million in fines and consumer redress under a settlement reached with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). In 2005, ChoicePoint notified over 163,000 consumers that their private data, including social security numbers and date of birth, had been released by the company due to […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has obtained its first penalty against a company assisting and facilitating in violating the Do Not Call law. Under a settlement, Entrepreneurial Strategies, Ltd. a Georgia company, and its chief executive Dale Allison Jr. are to pay the FTC $13,454.71 in civil penalties for violating the “assisting and facilitating” provision […]
Balough
December 13, 2013
An employer who knows or should know that an employee is viewing child pornographic sites on a company computer has an obligation to terminate or to discipline the employee and report the employee to law enforcement authorities. The issue arose in a case where a mother and her minor daughter sued the company where her […]
